Summary
- Andor proved that adult-oriented Star Wars content can succeed.
- Ryan Reynolds pitched an R-rated Star Wars film idea to Disney.
- Disney should consider an R-rated Star Wars film to excite fans.
Andor has proven that Star Wars fans will show up for adult stories in a galaxy far, far away. One Hollywood star agrees and wants Disney to get an R-rated Star Wars film on the books.
When Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, fans justifiably worried that the Star Wars franchise would become little more than a marketing machine to sell toys and merchandise to children. Though projects like Skeleton Crew and Young Jedi Adventures are clearly geared towards younger viewers, the critical and commercial success of Andor proves that Disney isn't afraid of more adult-oriented Star Wars fare. Given the outrageously positive fan reaction to Andor, it would make sense for the Mouse House to continue giving die-hards what they want, and one Hollywood A-lister is interested in bringing an R-rated Star Wars film to movie theaters around the world.
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Earlier this week, Ryan Reynolds appeared on The Box Office podcast with Scott Mendelson. The A-lister understandably has the ear of higher-ups at Disney after the monumental worldwide success of Deadpool & Wolverine. Since he does get to pitch directly to the people who make the big decisions, Reynolds revealed he went straight to the top with an idea for an R-rated Star Wars film: "I pitched to Disney, I said, ‘Why don’t we do an R-rated Star Wars property? It doesn’t have to be overt, A+ characters. There’s a wide range of characters you could use. And I don’t mean R-rated to be vulgar. R-rated as a Trojan horse for emotion. I always wonder why studios don’t want to just gamble on something like that." Also, Reynolds wasn't planning on starring in the film himself. "I’m not saying I want to be in it," he continued. "That would be a bad fit."
"I’d want to produce and write or be a part of behind the scenes. Those kinds of IP subsist really well on scarcity and surprise. We don’t get scarcity really with Star Wars because of Disney+, but you can certainly still surprise people."
Ryan Reynolds's Idea For An R-Rated Star Wars Film Is A Solid One, In Theory
The beautiful thing about the Star Wars franchise is that you can do anything with it. Andor alone had multiple different kinds of stories, including a heist arc, a jailbreak arc, and a fascist massacre arc. This is the same universe that can house a goofy cartoon about the Ewoks and a series about a clan of rogue clone troopers after Order 66. There is no end to the possibilities this franchise can realistically portray. Reynolds is absolutely correct in his analysis that Star Wars could excite and surprise fans with an R-rated film.
It is a little bit surprising that Disney seems to have dismissed the idea outright. If Marvel can handle serving up R-rated content and still sell Spider-Man toys to kids on a daily basis, why not Lucasfilm? Releasing a Star Wars film for adults wouldn't stop kids from wanting all the Grogu merch they can get their little hands on. If Disney really wants to get Star Wars fans talking again, an R-rated film would do just the trick.
Source: Variety